Kermit The Grenouille
by MurphysScribe
Summary: After the events of "Bury Your Dead" force Tony to end things with Jeanne Benoit, he still misses her, and enlists the team in making a gift to her hospital. Team as family, sorta. And Muppets!


Kermit the Grenouille

NCIS Episode tags- Season 4-5, the DiNozzo/Jeanne Benoit La Grenouille story arc, esp "Bury Your Dead." This is set shortly thereafter.

"Big box just came for you, Tony," called McGee as DiNozzo returned from lunch. Tony grabbed McGee's scissors and tore into the box of DVDs gleefully.

"What have you ordered? Pornography? Action movies?" Ziva asked disdainfully. "Lethal weapon? Yippee ki yay mother"

"Wrong movie, Ziva. That's Die Hard."

"Way to go McPopCulture! You make me so proud!" Tony reached over to pinch McGee's chubby cheeks.

As the day wound down, Tony heaved the box of DVDs onto his desk and started transferring them into a duffel bag.

Ziva peered over his shoulder to examine the titles. "The Muppet Movie? The Muppet Show? Muppet Babies? Tony, you are such a child!"

"More mocking, Zee-vah than when you thought it was porn?" He laughed at her.

Abby barreled into the room. "Eek! Muppets! Yesss! McGee has the TV, he's downstairs!"

"You too?" Ziva asked.

"Come on, Ziva, you didn't watch _Sesame Street_ when you were a kid? Only for you it would have been Rechov Sumsum, right?" And she had grabbed a handful of Muppet DVDs and was capering towards the elevator, humming a song that wasn't "can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street."

"How do you even know that?" Tony asked her. He shouldered the duffel.

Still curious, Ziva trailed after them.

McGee was already by DiNozzo's car, with a giant box.

"Shotgun!" Abby caroled. When McGee scowled, she said "What, I'm the one who has the directions!"

Directions Tony only pretended to need.

They drove into the parking lot of the Monroe University hospital. Tony grabbed a baseball cap and shades off the dashboard, and grabbed the duffel bag. He held the door for Ziva and McGee wrestling the giant box. In the elevator, he accidentally jostled McGee, then grabbed for the box. "Push 3," he said to Abby. Tony wedged himself into the back of the elevator, behind McGee and Ziva and the box.

Abby led their procession through the children's floor of the hospital. "It's time to put on makeup, it's time to light the lights!" she sang. Giggling children stuck their heads out of doorways, some following their procession down the hall, wheeling IV poles alongside.

In the brightly painted children's playroom, Abby engulfed Sister Mary Nolan, the hospital volunteer, in a massive hug, then got to work helping McGee set up the massive plasma screen TV. Tony kept his head down and dug through the DVDs to unearth the DVD player. Memory and the hospital smell washed over him, the bitter antiseptic smell that had clung to Jeanne's scrubs, to her hair. Tony had gotten to like that smell, because it was part of her, part of their embraces.

When the hospital administrator walked into the room, Tony called out "Mr. Gemcity's right over there."

"Buh-wha?" McGee said, startled. Abby elbowed him, and whispered something urgent. "Oh! Right! Hi. Thom E. Gemcity, author of Deep Six. I think there are some forms I'm supposed to sign, as soon as I get the DVDs set up."

Pulling Tony aside he said "You could have warned me- my agent would've wanted pictures. This is great PR."

Tony yanked the crime scene camera out of his bag, and popped the flash in McGee's face. "Already thought of it, McGemcity."

Once the DVD player was set up, Abby and McGee gathered the kids around, and pressed play.

"But--- it is a talking frog?" Ziva murmured.

"Hush, just go with it," Abby said. "Weren't you ever a kid?"

At the back of the crowd, still jumpy when anyone walked past, Tony congratulated himself. _"Was any of it true?" Jeanne had asked, hurt in her eyes. _ Months later, it still stung. So much had been true.

And now, a noted author was making a gift to a noted hospital. And Tony, anonymous behind deceptions, a charity gift via Abby's nuns and McGee's pen name, was finding a way to give Jeanne a gift. A gift that shared his true loves- film, comedy, and the hospital served wholeheartedly by the daughter of La Grenouille.


End file.
